A Long Noncoding RNA, ANCR, Is Upregulated in Bladder and Breast Tumor Tissues

Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) have recently found to have important regulatory roles, and their aberrant expressions and functions are directly linked to carcinogenesis. Both urinary bladder and breast tumors are prevalent neoplasms, with high rates of incidence. To identify a potential expression alteration of the recently discovered "anti-differentiation non-coding RNA, (ANCR), during tumorigenesis, we initially assessed its expression in several cancer cell lines (LNCAP, MCF-7, Ht-29, 5637, A549, HepG2, and PC3) and then compared its expression variability in tumor vs. non-tumor samples of bladder and breast. Here, ANCR expression profile was studied by qRT-PCR in paired tumor and marginal non-tumor samples obtained from patients that had been referred to the Labbafi-Nejad and Imam Khomeini Hospitals, respectively. Our data revealed a significant upregulation (p = 0.003) of ANCR in breast tumor tissues, in comparison to non-tumor marginal specimens from same patients. Similar upregulation was also detected in bladder tumor samples, however, this alteration was not statistically significant (p ? 0.05), probably due to small number of samples (n = 10). In conclusion, our results suggest a possible role of ANCR in tumorigenesis of bladder and breast tissues, as well as its potential usefulness as a novel diagnostic biomarker for bladder and breast tumors.